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By Root 1853 0

close to the second enemy line, waiting for the barrage to lift before they tackled it. But things had gone wrong. The 7th Brigade, in reserve behind the 9th, were only intended to go forward if they were absolutely required to help. No signal was given but excitement, like panic, easily spreads. A few men started it, carried away by the thrill of the moment, and, seeing the Liverpool Scots and the Lincolns rush on and disappear into the smoke, they leapt forward and ran after them, cheering and yelling and desperate to get into the fight. After that there was no stopping it, and soon the whole 7th Brigade was on the move, running like the wind to catch up. They leapt across the first wave in the captured German trench and caught up with the second, waiting beyond it for the barrage to lift. And they carried them forward by sheer impetus, breaking into their spread-out ranks so that companies, platoons, even sections were split up. Now they were all running – and they ran into their own barrage. In the confusion of smoke and dust, the Artillery Officers observing the bombardment had no means of knowing that the shells were falling on their own troops. When the barrage finally lifted the survivors of the carnage advanced and took the second trench. But it was the death-knell of the attack – so promising in its beginning – that might have won them back the Bellewaerde Ridge.

Even the first wave, reorganising in their newly captured line, was so confused by the sudden appearance of the third wave passing through them that they too had advanced soon and joined in the melee. The result was total confusion. A small group of Royal Scots Fusiliers managed to reach the final objective on the top of the ridge, but under fire from their own artillery they could not possibly hold it for long. All along the line small groups of men were fighting the enemy with bombs and bayonets, but by half past nine the survivors were forced to fall back to the first captured line of German trenches. They had been beaten by their own artillery, by their own bravery and, tragically, by their own blind enthusiasm.

The German guns were bombarding furiously to prevent reinforcements getting up, and U Company was ordered forward from the trenches across the Menin Road.

Sgt. A. Rule.

We crossed the Menin Road under a steady hail of machine-gun bullets. In our old front line we were up to the knees in liquid mud and all but trampling on the dead and wounded on the floor of the trench. The badly wounded – poor devils! – moaned agonisingly at the slightest touch as we squeezed past, and we were sniped at continually when we mounted the firestep to avoid treading on them. Our attack had disturbed a hornets’ nest for, in addition to the deadly hail of bullets, whizz-bangs were bursting on the parapet every few yards and shrapnel fairly sang about our ears. Some of the attacking troops were now falling back in disorder, and we received instructions to move forward on Y Wood in order to provide a stiffening effect and help to allay panic. Our line of advance was a partly dug communication trench running towards our objective and it was unhappily chosen, because we became a concentrated target for whizz-bangs and its bottle-neck entrance from our own front line gave unlimited sport to the German gunners. I remember vividly pausing there under cover for a moment, while a brace of whizz-bangs crashed just ahead, and then hurdling the parapet with a desperate rush and just missing the next salvo. Two men following me hesitated just a fraction too long and mistimed their jump. A whizz-bang caught them fair and square. Littered as it was with dead and wounded, the trench was even more congested with two streams of men moving in opposite directions.

By this time our casualties were fairly heavy and the two platoon commanders who led us in had both been wounded, but our NCOs carried on. Of course, the Germans counterattacked but they were beaten off, mainly by the heroic efforts of our solitary machine-gun team, and it stayed in action when, by the law of averages,